Spain offers such a diversity of options that it can be hard to decide where to start. Art and architecture surround you while the culinary scene is heavily influenced by the diverse Iberian terrains, coastlines, and former colonies.

 

The Umayyads were prolific in their uniquely Islamic styles while The Age of Exploration utterly transformed the Iberian Peninsula, practically overnight.  El Greco, Goya, Dalí, Gaudí and Calatrava are just a few names in a proud succession that have left an indelible imprint.  Spending a Saturday night in Madrid on the pedestrianized street cafés, strolling the Gran Vía, on a rooftop terrace or in all night club may leave you considering a move here or the very least, how to get all the Spanish wine bottles home with you!

 

Quito, Ecuador's high-altitude capital is towered over by Andean landscapes. Visitors can even take a cable car from the city to Pichincha Volcano. Spanish plazas are lined with spectacular churches while local Andean highland residents clad in their identifying indigenous garb pass by. Both have left profound marks on the art, architecture, history, and rhythm of daily life in the city.  Influences from the Pacific, Andean and Amazon regions can also converge in Quito. Right on the doorstep of the city travelers can experience the bustle of small mountain market towns where local indigenous residents and farmers sell locally grown produce but local artists set up displays from which you can browse for unique works by the artists themselves.

 

Salvador, in the Brazilian state of Bahia, is perhaps the city in all of the America's where visitors can best experience the unique influences brought from Africa and Portugal. Musically, percussion features prominently with a group called Olodum while a newer genre called Axé blends several styles and will move you, almost literally, through the streets during Salvador’s Carnaval.

 

Exploring the colonial Pelourinho neighborhood’s baroque churches visitor encounter Africanized icons, spectacular gold leaf altars and cloisters clad in a particular style of Portuguese ceramic tile called an azulejo. A visit here transports visitors to the 16th and 17th centuries while it may also challenge you: the name of this neighborhood literally translates to “The Little Whipping Post.”  Learn about a practice called syncretism when you tie a ribbon at the Bonfim Basilica before hitting the beach in the afternoon.  On the culinary side, African influences are well represented.  No visit is complete without a visit to one of the women known as a Baiana for a bit of streetfood. Clad in their iconic white dresses, hoopskirts, lace accents, colorful jewelry, and unique headdress, they often serve a shrimp filled fritter called Acarajé deep fried in dênde oil, which is native to western Africa.